ISLAND 2012
For 2012 Lafargue/Wildbolz apply for a artist residency in Island.
Keep you posted!
The idea to apply for this residency is covering a commun wish to deepen our research on sounds, forms, colours, light, and interaction with landscape.

The Foundation has been working towards cultivating an environment for the preservation and development of the artistic and cultural resources not only of India but of the world as a whole. Sanskriti Kendra has emerged as a congenial working space for individuals engaged in sustained creative endeavor. It is a seven acre complex redolent with plants; three museums of everyday art, Indian terracotta, and Indian Textiles; residential studios & artists lounge and a ceramic center.

In November 2008 I spent a month as "artist in residence" at Sanskriti Foundation, New Delhi. My wish to start a personal research turned out to be supported by Indian group of Pro Helvetia.
My plan was to spend 3 month in India and start a longterm project.

SACRAL URBAN MUSIC / SACRAL URBAN SPACE

New Delhi: Pollution, slowmotion stress, intensity, complexity, extremes, chaos, noise car's honking. old worlds close to new ones, feelings of "rejecting" of "being disgusted" "struggeling" and "delighted", "inspired", "attracted", "deeply touched" and being "concerned"! Slowly the colored towels wrapped me up.
Here in the west I have heard quite a few thrilling and beautiful words of people. Philosophicaly brilliant speeches and encouraging teachings! And then you are struggeling because of a tiny impossibility! There you go:

out of control!

Helplessness.. the shadow sharply draws the lines: I am shrinking!

I accept the nonsense of my demands. I am wrapped up in red, yellow, green, orange in Minor and Major, and I guess, there is no understanding, but a feel of being a small part of this chaos and order.

The first week my whole technical equipement fails. Computer crash! Lots of people that like to help but where is THE one! Misery! You feel stupid and small! After 5 days I have a hotspot and meet a real professional. My equipement runs within half a day! Amazing help and support the rest of my stay in India!

Soon after my arrival I meet Malti Gillani, a highly trained singer. She is a experienced artist and looks back on a long career as close student of Ustad Bade ghulam Ali Khan. I follow some of her lessons to one of her students and share her precious time.
In Gillani's house I immediately understand that I enter a space which is filled with a hudge potential........

Malti Gillani, close student of Ustad Bade ghulam Ali Khan

(photo from "The Hindu" Online edition of India's National Newspaper, 20th March 2003: S. Arneja)

The lessons takes place at Malti's private home in her personal restroom. We sit on the ground. Student and master face to face. At least 30 minutes of tuning follow.
A perpetuous chant that travels from one to the other. Octave down first then upwards.
Malti carefully starts to wave the sounds arround each note. My attention is captured within the first second. My inner voice begins to wake up and recognize the way of tuning that is so familiar to me. But it seems that I have lost it a long time ago. In this small and warm room full of sound I remember! After a while another musician, he knows the art of tabla, is entering and starts to tune his instrument. Thousand fingers dance on that skin and produce delicate scales and rhythm. The raga just began!
The way Malti transmissed her knowledge to her students is a primarily oral one. this differs method of using notation to pass on set pieces. In fact, the way in which classical indian music has been passed on from generation to generation is closer to blues, jazz or rap than traditional western classical music teaching.
No classroom situation. The training which is popularly referred to as the Guru Shishya Parampara literally means Teacher Discipline Tradition. It evolves around the personality of the teacher (Guru) and his capacity to germinate and grow the process of creation in his pupils. Hence, the 'Gurukul' the home of the Guru. The teacher is thus a philosopher and guide rather than a simple source of technical knowledge.

The few lessons with Malti Gillani opened up my whole perception of sound and tuning and prepared prepared my visit to Mumbai, where I met sarangi master, Dhruba Ghosh.

Dhruba Ghosh is the inheritor of the tradition of his masters, his father Pandit Nikhil Ghosh, the famed percussionist and pedagogue, the veteran vocalist-composer Pandit Dinkar Kaikini, and the renowned sarangi maestro Ustad Sagiruddin Khan of the legendary Bundu Khan style of Delhi. (please visit: http://www.artindia.net/dhruba.html). As on the mentionned site you will find information about the master, Dhruba Ghosh, I will not mention the list of numerous activities, as his portrait on the artindia is complete. For myself meeting Dhruba Ghosh was/is a crucial turning point and I left Mumbai "reborn as a artist", "deeply touched" and "concerned".
My experience of western transmission of knowledge is integrated by "stress", "fear of failing", "expectations", "strategies", "concepts", "competitions", "evaluation", "struggeling", "anger", "deceptions",, "frustrations".
A few teachers that supported me honnestly would stay in my mind....there are few, fortunately! They were protectors of my potential that finally would extend and unfold. The culture that printed its informations on me, teached me to develop a critical thinking, to question society and norms, to make considerations, to have my own view on subjects, to have my own and individual perception of the world and the consciousness of being a indipendant woman and artist. This is a precious blessing that prepared me to meet Dhruba Ghosh.

I guess that Indian music is basically a very meditative approach to life, searching the inner peace.

A crossing has been passed and slowly a inner flow is pushing forward!
I stop searching and try to step beside as much as needed to let things happen!

MUSIC HEALS WOUNDS OF THE SOUL

Dr. V. Mohini Giri, founder of the War Widows Association, which provides education and job training for the socially shunned widows of India. http://www.guildofserviceni.com/
photo from article "chattel to freewomen>Empowering India's Females by Marilyn K. Angelucci)

When I enter the office of Mohini Giri, I forgot everything I planned to ask her. Time seems to just stop for that moment and I know, that there is nothing or so much to ask her about! One hour will make no sence at all?
Her sharp reflections and focus is thrilling me and immediately I feel concern about this precious moment! My questions about the situation of widows and my filming in Vrindavan will bring us without wasting our time to the essential projects of her activities. Mohini Giri does Healing work in a very concret way. She creates real space and possibilities to people and awakes their potential to find new perspectives!
Through the various projects of her organisation women and children affected by conflict situations and other unfortunate circumstances are empowered economically, politically and socially by giving them vocational training to build their capacities and make them self reliant so that they are rehabilitated completely.

About her work with the Kashmiri children she tells me: "Oh, come with me and you will listen to them. They can sing beautifully" Mohini Giri's eyes open with joy and invite me.
Winding past narrow lanes of Indira Nagar in the secluded Badami Bagh area of Srinagar is the three-storeyed Rahat Ghar, the only home of its kind in the Valley for militancy-affected widows and their children. Widows and orphans of militants as well as civilians caught in the crossfire get equal importance.

Despite the trauma they have gone through, the narrow streets reverberate with the joyous strains of popular film songs belted out by its youthful inmates.

Music heals wounds of the soul, say Zamrooda Najar, who, with her sister Zahida and Jaya Iyer have been running the home for five years now.

Amritsar, Golden Tempel (November 2008)
Golden Temple is the most sacred temple of the Sikhs built by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The lower portion of the temple displays white marble inlay work and the upper portion is embellished with copper coated over by gold plate. Beginning early in the morning and lasting until long past sunset, these hymns are chanted to the exquisite accompaniment of flutes, drums, and stringed instruments. Echoing across the serene lake, this enchantingly beautiful music induces a delicate yet powerful state of trance in the pilgrims strolling leisurely around the marble concourse encircling the pool and temple. An underground spring feeds the sacred lake, and throughout the day and night pilgrims immerse themselves in the water, a symbolic cleansing of the soul rather than an actual bathing of the body. Next to the temple complex are enormous pilgrims' dormitories and dining halls where all persons, irrespective of race, religion, or gender (exept also the Sikhs have their exclusion of women in the inner golden tempel while the washing and cleaning with milk is taking place at midnight), are lodged and fed for free.

Sacral spaces are of course the tempels that invite people to live their rituals together and to share meditation whatever form is used. India is full of those rituals, we all know that. Myself I was not specially triggered by the theatral way of rituals as more of how people share and exchange practically and how their devotion would concretly be realised in all days life. While the chanting in the Golden Tempel goes on, a wholy carpet has to be repaired. Outside of the Tempel a man is sitting and working on this carpet while the rituals go on. Arround the working man there is a rhythmic pattern that manifests as sound and as movement. His regular movement is melted with his breathing and all that is arround him melts within.
I spent the most of the time in the 24 hour running kitchen, which feeds about 10,000 pilgrims every day, and is run on a voluntary basis. In this kitchen food is shared and people are washing the dishes after having eaten. Hudge bugs of dishes are carried to the washbasins where hundreds of hands play with the water. A amazing drone of sound is filling the air. People laughing, whispering, exchanging. Within the kitchen hudge pans are filled with milk for Chai, or rice, dhal and other vegetables. A endless dance round the fire.

Before returning to Europe I met a old tibetan community that still know the art of tempelbells. Mussoorie, Dehra Dun. Sitting for hours next to one of the last tibetan tuning masters that carefully blesses the tempelbells before artcraft is sculptured to give them a shiny and delicate ornamented appearance. The production is still made one by one and so every bell gets its own individual signature. In the sound of this tuning "time gets lost" as we follow the vibration that waves itself through the room and further gets lost in the fields. A intensity of concentration and careful handeling creates a beautiful and peaceful situation and connects the ones that realises his knowledge.